Day 3469 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Romans 8:18 NIV

From within a faith which affords the promise of the last someday being first is found the hope that these present struggles through which we stumble will too turn into a triumph upon that same day.

Because that’s just what Jesus does, turn things into their otherwise impossibly opposed outcome. Indeed, as He is what we can continually consider a continued contrarian to the current consensus, we can then contend that His intent is to do as He said He intended and even showed He entirely insisted to the tune of tables turned and the dead walking amongst those who only assume themselves alive. For He has worked so many miracles along the way to where we are today that we’ve now no reason to imagine that whatever we face is afforded the finality we usually fear.

For He is the only One with the final word, and His Word has read that those who suffer in this life are done with sin, thus done with death, thus afforded a new life revived inside their share of His suffering blossoming into that most blessed resurrection in which we’ve now this audacious hope which allows us to smile in the face of any adversity attempting to preempt His promise by upending our present preference for what is only a personal ease not worth the loss.

Which is exactly what all ease really is, just a loss of sorts of something we shouldn’t be quite so willing to lose quite so easily. That is this path of least resistance that we’ve walked so well so far, it is but an endless evidence of the substance of things settled for simply for the sake of not having to suffer through more to reach more, know more, see more, be more. No, we’ve long been a people of less all because it requires the same, less.

And to a people both perfected in fear and failure, we are likely to be always inclined toward the lesser necessity of life’s choices. When presented with a dilemma, we always decide to confide within the confines of our past outcomes given always unto comfort. We fear anything difficult, anything strange, anything uncertain, and for good reason. That reason being that we know we suck at handling anything anywhere beyond our firmly understood inabilities.

We know we are in many ways more unable and insufficient than not, and this knowledge, as all knowledge does, bestows a sense of responsibility. One in this case being the responsibility we feel to forgo whatever we might fail or might cause us to fall short. Again.

And I say again because, again, that has simply become who we are. We’re a people of endless repetition. We’ve run these ruts of our routines so deep into this ground that we can’t bear the burden of believing beyond what we’ve already known and always been. We are in every way, and sadly so, entirely willing to settle short simply for the fear of the flames that going further would likely ignite and thus all but instantly destroy such things as comfort, complacency, this considered ability to maintain the status quo that works well enough for the most part.

Indeed, we are a people of good enough, always happy to stay short of what is inarguably better simply because it asks of us something lesser.

But what seems a truly confused contention is this incessant complaining done from within these comforts we’ve come to settle for. For if what we’ve chosen as defined by our present existence made up of choices made by us is truly as great as we’ve come to make ourselves believe, well then what are we whining about? If all this lesser is truly equitable to the better we could have had, could have been had we been just a bit more willing to suffer through struggle or hardship or hatred or persecution or misunderstanding or whatever other excuse we used to avoid the better we still know either is possible or rather was possible at some point, then why are we still so dissatisfied with life?

I mean, again, we’re the ones who choose just how far we’re willing to go and just how much we’re willing to lose to get there. Where I think all of this has become this sort of grounds for disappointment is that we all have indeed believed for better, but rather than suffering toward it we’ve agreed to listen to a world that inspires us to fear the effort or risk involved in reaching it. We’ve listened to this world so long in fact that many simply despise the truth as it reminds us all of the better we were once and could still be.

Alas we’ve come to know only fear of struggle and strife, meaning then that this life is one lived lesser simply out of this fear of what we’d have to go through to get to what we perhaps once hoped to see or be. Indeed, such is the existence of any and all so stuck to the path of least resistance. They’re perpetually bound to such things as excuses and wonder as that fear allowed inside of things that are going to happen anyway convinces them that they can otherwise avoid the worst of it simply by agreeing to want less of it.

Life that is.

We have come to believe that we can be content with a shallower life, an emptier life, a more boring and bland and mundane and mediocre life all because that which is lesser asks less and risks less. But friends, what we seem to willfully misunderstand is that, again, it’s all going to happen anyway. For such is the design of life having not at all been designed by us. As much as God didn’t ask our input or preference when planning this path we’re taking, nor does He intend to relent upon His plans for this path He’s already paved.

All of life will unfold in accord with His will. All then that’s left for us is a somewhat personal choice as to whether or not we welcome that will or rather seek to avoid the difficulty promised within.

Either way, it’s all coming down however He sends it.

What then are we supposed to assume we can do about it?

Do we honestly think so highly of ourselves and our personal preferences that we think He will back off His plans for us should we whine or worry enough that He feels bad for calling us to be better? Do we think that if we flash enough of these saddened and sullen puppy dog eyes up toward His place in the sky above that He will feel guilty for calling us into the fire, unto the battle, onto the water? Are we to believe that His asking us to do something hard, sketchy, scary, all but seriously impossible and entirely uncertain is asked as He seeks to make us look foolish or lead us into yet another failure in regard to faith?

Have we learned nothing from this life we’ve already lived in which He has gotten us through all that He has led us to? For each of us have faced by this time an otherwise untold number of situations or circumstances that we thought, in the moment, might be the death of us. I know I have. I’ve stared down the barrel of so many burdens and fears and things that I knew I could only fail because I knew I couldn’t do it alone as I know well my limitations defined by my fears and my past failures found by the both combining into what is an ongoing insufficiency.

I know that I’m not enough to endure what this life asks of us. And yet here I sit still hammering away on this laptop perched atop a shoebox frantically chasing down this same hope that I’ve had that I know now has gotten me through everything I couldn’t do alone. It’s almost like that is exactly what our struggles are really for. Not to make us feel unable or to inspire fear. Not to remind us of our inabilities or our past embarrassments. Not to usher in new failures or prove us unfaithful.

We don’t need help with any of that!

No, I believe that every struggle in life is sent from God to help us see that it is only God who has and is and can and will get us through all that we cannot go through on our own. All so that we learn to lean on Him, which is ironically exactly what His very own Word asks us to do.

Proverbs 3:5

And yet that is perhaps the greatest ask of all in that calling us to lean not upon our own understandings but to rather trust in the Lord with all our heart demands that we let down our guard and welcome the coming of whatever His will delights to do in us in order to work through us in order to show Himself to this world that needs that same trust in His goodness more than any of us could ever realize or even begin to understand.

That is something that has started becoming a truly novel contemplation in my life of late. This realizing that I need Him more today than I did yesterday as the fears of yesterday have now given way to a pinch more trust today. For within that ever-growing reliance I’m finding these ongoing reminders of things I’ve done that weren’t allowed to be the end I thought they were. I’m feeling these healings of scars that I just knew would never stop hurting. I’m seeing this hope of a better home shine a bit brighter all the time.

And as that hope grows thanks to a world growing cold, I find myself strangely eager to suffer as I know that perhaps that’s the only way I can grow toward that hope of something better.

An example perhaps.

5-6 years ago I hit the scales at about 320, or thereabouts as the scale they had in the little gym at our old apartment stopped at 300, but when I stepped on the needle kept going past that mark. For so many years before I’d lived wondering what life might be like if I was in better shape, better health, had a better ability to breathe and be and become something that I just always had this nagging to become. But for all those years it stopped at wondering because I knew the kinds of struggle it would mean to find out.

And I didn’t want to go through it, because I knew I couldn’t. I knew that my life of laziness and excess had led me to a place of physical inability that easily prevented me from believing that I could maybe be something undeniably better. It was just too far away, would take too much time to reach for, too much work to work through, too much change along the way. But one day that fear of failure promised by my inability inspiring my hesitancy toward struggle finally gave way to that curious belief that I’d always had for my life.

183

That’s where that scale hits today. And over these years of losing more weight than just what the scale shows as I’ve lost the weight of worry and wonder and the fear of failure, I’ve found a willingness to struggle for what I can’t fight against knowing is better. Because I’ve done just that, all of us have. We fight ourselves against ourselves because who we’ve become is both ashamed of who we are and also afraid of what it would take to become who we were meant to be. But that’s the question for today.

Is where you are, who you are worth so little to you that you’re convinced, content to stay where you are living as who you are simply because you’re afraid of the hurt and hardship and hassle of a life lived in struggle promised and proven along the path to something undeniably better?

Sadly we live within a world that screams a resounding ‘YES’ to that very pondering. People live in fear of effort, endurance, inability, insufficiency, discipline, determination, dedication, humiliation, humility all because all the above are open to misery. But the outcome of a life is defined, at least in part, but what is put into a life. And so we have to sit with ourselves and consider what we’re putting in and what that will allow us to find in the fallout.

Because it’s coming either way. Only upon that day there will be very different outcomes depending upon the way we lived here. Ironically both promise both hardship and peace, both comfort and contention, both misery and healing, both success and failure, and yes, both life and death. As I often say, it’s just a matter of which and when. For what we find in this life will be flipped in the next as He is again a Man known for turning things upside down.

If we live this life seeking our rewards as wanted in such worldly prizes as comfort and prosperity and greed and gluttony, we will indeed find all the above to whatever measure this world can afford. But, “truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.” I think of that perfect warning given us in Matthew 6:2 all the time it seems as it reminds me of the complexity of this life lived outside of where we belong. Where am I seeking my reward, and just what exactly is that reward?

Like you I’ve sought every prize this world can pretend is worth letting go of Heaven to have. And I’ve had a bunch of them, and as I’ve grown in this faith, it’s definitely been a struggle to fall out of love with all I’ve had and to let go of the more I’ve always wanted. Still strange somedays. But just like all that weight I’ve lost, both physically and mentally, and indeed now spiritually too, I know now that this world is only ours to lose as we’re promised we’ll all one day leave it behind.

But what will we find ahead?

Personally, knowing that Christ died to give me the chance to see Heaven just proves to me that the place is worth dying for. And that He laid down His life the way He did only shows too that it’s worth suffering for as well. So be it. I would rather suffer and struggle in this life than in the next as I know that this one ends whereas eternity doesn’t. And so I most definitely agree with ol’ Paul here in that whatever we go through in this life, and however miserable it’s bound to be, it’s not at all worth comparing to what it all leads to in the end.

Just remember that Jesus is known for turning things upside down to the tune of water becoming wine, dead men walking, tombs turning into turnstiles welcoming the weary and worn to a crown adorned with everlasting life bestowed only upon the few who fought against their fears of hardship rather than against the One who sends them in order to refine us into who He always knew we could be.

Please don’t settle for a life lived easy, because this world isn’t where we should want our rest. No, this world is simply the place that should make that rest promised in Heaven something in which we hope a little harder every step home.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold